The Third Beat, Revolution
by mercurybard
Summary: Set in A.C. 197, the Gundam pilots decided not to detonate their gundams after Mariemaia's Uprising. Good thing, for they're going to need them again as an old threat is about to make itself known to the world at large... DISCONTINUED
1. Prologue

(I do not own _Gundam Wing_, I just play in the sandbox. I mean no harm and make no profit from this).

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A.C. 197

"Heero Yuy's death has been avenged—the Alliance is toppled, OZ is disbanded, the Romefeller Foundation has fallen…"

"And in their place, a world nation has been established!" the voice on the other end of the line roared. "The colonies are no freer of terrestrial control than they were at the start of our campaign! Mark my words, J., this "Earth Sphere Unified Nation" is nothing more than the Alliance with a different face."

"But peace…" the battered scientist tried to protest.

"A hollow peace, so long as the Earth has such influence over the colonies. As much as I disagree with his ideals, Dekim Barton's attack on the Earth was slouching in the right direction."

J. sighed and slumped in his chair. "What would you have me do?"

"Activate the girl. Send her after the old suits."

"But no one knows for sure what happened to them."

"Treize did. His facility beneath the palace in Prague contains the research he conducted as well as the facilities he used to rebuild the Epyon. I will send you information on how to gain access to the underground rooms."

"As you wish, D.," J. said with another sigh. Twenty-two years. That was too long to fight the same fight. He was getting too old for this. Had too many mechanical parts for this. But, did he have a choice? No. He had sworn his life to this cause, and, so long as he lived—so long as she allowed him to live—he would serve her as he promised…

He really hadn't expect to live this long.


	2. Chapter 1

Trowa watched the dancers swirl by with dull eyes. The colorful pageantry, the genteel mood, the aristocratic traditions were lost on him…not because he didn't understand them, but because he didn't care. He stood next a pillar off to the side of the parquet dance floor. The borrowed uniform—a formal version of the ones the Preventers usually wore—itched, and he fought the urge to fiddle with his collar. He was beginning to think he'd made a mistake in agreeing to help Heero with the security at this ball. But Heero had called during the circus's slow season—the Preventers were short-handed ever since Zechs and Noin had taken off for Mars and the terraforming project, and now Wufei had, inexplicably, demanded his vacation days—and Trowa had agreed before he realized what he was doing. Now, he was stuck in an overly-starched uniform that didn't even belong to him.

He had seen Heero on and off throughout the evening, catching glimpses of him through the crowd as the other pilot escorted Relena Darlian. Besides those two, the only person he recognized (well, from some place other than the news) was Sylvia Noventa. The sweet-faced granddaughter of Field Marshal Noventa was escorting her grandmother. Trowa had met both of them shortly after the battle in Siberia, during the wars, when Heero had gone from one surviving relative of the late Field Marshal to the next, offering them the chance for revenge. He'd even brought his own gun for them to use. Efficient. Obviously, since Heero was still alive to escort the Vice Foreign Minister to charity balls, none of the Noventas had taken him up on his offer. Trowa doubted that either Sylvia or her grandmother would recognize him—after all, he had gone out of his way to be inconspicuous as Heero had tried to settle his debts.

His thoughts were interrupted as Quatre came skidding to a halt beside him. "How late am I?" The short blond pilot was dressed in a formal suit complete with the handful of medals that the Earth Sphere Unified Nation had granted to them all for their services during the Eve War and Mariemaia's Uprising. Heero, supposedly, had flushed his down the toilet. Trowa had seriously considered doing the same, but Catherine had gotten wind of his plan and stolen the medals from him. She was keeping them, she said, for his children. He hadn't bothered to correct her. So long as he didn't accidentally come across them while cleaning, he didn't care.

"Hour and a half," he answered Quatre, who was out of breath. His tie was also askew and his hair tousled, like he'd been running through the wind.

The blond swore under his breath in Arabic. At least, Trowa assumed it was an oath—he had heard the Maganacs using it several times while working on their mobile suits. "Rashid misfiled our flight plan," Quatre explained. "The Prague spaceport wasn't expecting us."

"You haven't missed anything."

"I hope not. My father spent such a long time establishing Winner Enterprises as a charitable company that I would hate to do anything to damage that reputation." Quatre fussed with his tie.

A soft voice made both young men look up, "Hello, Mr. Barton." Sylvia Noventa stood in front of them, hands clasped demurely in front of her. She wore a pale pink gown that would swirl when she danced and long white gloves that reached past her elbows. The twin barrettes that held her hair back from her face at the temples were gold tonight and studded with tiny pieces of pink rose quartz and white opals. "I did not expect to see you here tonight. Are you with the Preventers now?" She nodded to his uniform.

"No," he answered and immediately regretted how harsh that sounded. She didn't deserve his bad mood. "I'm just supplementing tonight's security. Heero's a Preventer though—he's around here somewhere," he offered.

"Yes, I saw Mr. Yuy earlier." Sylvia looked to Quatre now. "Will you be so kind, Mr. Barton, to introduce me to your friend?"

Trowa looked down at Quatre, who had been staring unabashedly at the young woman. When she mentioned him, the blond pilot started flushing furiously. Trowa hid a smile. "Sylvia Noventa, meet Quatre Raberba Winner, the head of Winner Enterprises."

"Pl-pleased to meet you," Quatre said, stumbling over the words a little. At least, he managed a suave kiss to the back of her hand. Trowa was surprised at that—the other boy looked stunned as if Sandrock had just kicked him in the head. He had no idea that a pretty girl could do this Quatre.

In the background, the string quartet struck up a waltz. "Do you dance, Mr. Winner?" Sylvia asked, blushing as well.

Quatre nodded dumbly and let her lead him out on to the dance floor. Once they actually fell into the forms of the dance, Quatre seemed to calm down. Trowa went back to suffering the uniform in silence. It was going to be a long, boring night.


	3. Chapter 2

Getting into the charity ball being held at the government's palace in Prague was childishly easy. A bit of tweaking with the computer had her listed as one of the freelance security people hired to work the floors. A quick stop at the palace two hours before the doors opened had gotten her a Preventer dress uniform to wear to the event. The esteemed Gundam pilot and hero of the Eve Wars and the Uprising, Heero Yuy, was the coordinator for security. He had not looked pleased as he looked the freelancers over, but neither did he show any signs of recognition as his eyes slid across her face. Good.

She waited until the ball was well under way before making her move. Quietly, she abandoned her post near the ladies' restroom (why on earth he felt she needed to stand guard there?) and slipped down the hall. She wound her way through the palace and down to the subterranean levels. Built in pre-colonial days, the palace had been restored to its original grandeur by the Romefeller Foundation. Details on exactly what operations were conducted here during Romefeller's reign were sketchy, but whatever they were, the soldiers here had possessed high security clearances.

And then, there were some secrets that required a slightly more elegant key to unlock. She opened the door to a solarium on the northeast end of the building. Designed as a luxurious place to take breakfast, it had not been used since OZ moved out. Dust a quarter inch thick covered the furniture and came up in little puffs as her booted feet sank into the thick carpet. She closed and carefully locked the door behind her before crossing the room to the harpsichord that stood in front of the large windows. Seating herself in front of the instrument, she took a moment to try and remember what Dr. J. had drummed into her head just a few days before. Knowing how to play the harpsichord had not, until recently, been considered necessary for her training.

Then, her hands flew across the ebony and ivory keys with frightening speed and precision, and the first few strains of "Battle Hymn of the Republic" filled the solarium. Behind her, one of the bookcases swung forward with a creak. She knew only the first few bars and stopped once she exhausted her knowledge. Turning her attention to the opening behind the bookcase, she saw a set of stone stairs leading down into the dark. From her pocket, she took a penlight and turned it on. It made a tiny, fairy-like beam of light but did little to cut through the stairwell's pervasive gloom. Unbothered by the dark, she headed down.

The stone stairs, damp with moisture, wound down into the bowels of the earth, or so it seemed. She descended for what she estimated was five minutes before reaching a metal door with a wheel in the center like those seen on ships and submarines. Placing the penlight between her teeth, she had to use both hands to turn the rusty wheel and force the door open. The area beyond was as black as pitch. She beamed the penlight on the wall to the left, where she had been told to look, and it soon swept over the pad to activate the lights. She slapped it, and the lights came on high above her head. Slowly, at first, dim as they warmed, but soon the entire chamber was flooded with purple-white illumination.

Five bays designed for large mobile suits spread out across the far wall of the cavernous room, a series of consoles interposed between them and her. The bays were empty now, and the hangar door at the end of the underground room had been sealed shut over two years ago. Five bays…Treize had been optimistic. She walked over to the consoles and thumbed the power strip set into front of the first one. Slowly, the computer booted up, recalling what it meant to function. The technology was out-dated but not annoyingly slow. It only took a couple of moments for the operating system to load.

/Password/ it queried.

/Act 3/ she typed in response.

/Password confirmed. Loading mobile suit database./ Code began to stream down the screen. Soon, it coalesced into text and pictures. She watched it scroll by with cold detachment, then began saving it to a disk she had brought with her.

There they were—technical readouts for the five original Gundams. Deathwalker, Gate, Shadowdancer, Epyon, and Dragonbreak. All the blueprints and specifications—even handwritten notes by both those involved in their design and in the production carefully scanned into the computer. Data on the ZERO system as well. This was a mobile suit designer's wet dream—worth trillions to anyone who got their hands on it. From a historical perspective, it was priceless. There was very little information about the original series of Gundams—the Alliance had seen to that. She didn't care. Her mission was to retrieve the information and then hand it over to her superiors.

The console beeped at her, letting her know it had finished copying the information needed on to her disk. Putting the disk back in the pocket it had come out of, she shut down the computer and headed back upstairs. But not before turning out the lights.

Heero missed a step in the dance, but Relena didn't seem to notice. She was leading—she always led when they danced since that first time, at St. Gabriel's, when he had been unfamiliar with the steps—and she did it so subtly that only a handful of the most experienced might notice that Heero Yuy didn't really know this part of the waltz.

She was making small talk as they twirled around the ballroom floor, and he made sure to grunt in all the right places. They would dance this dance; then, she would go mingle with the other guests, and he would trail after her like a dutiful bodyguard. Lady Une had asked him, when giving him this mission, if he minded always being assigned to guard the Vice Foreign Minister. He told her no…he didn't mind. There wasn't anything better for him to do now that the wars were over, and, at least, he was familiar enough with Relena that it made the job easy. He didn't have a family to go back to like Trowa and Quatre, and he didn't have a lover to make a life with, like Duo. Wufei, it seemed, found great satisfaction in working as a Preventer. To Heero, it was just another job. It kept him sharp, alert, gave him an excuse to keep up his skills…even if there was little need for them in this post-war world. He didn't know what else to do with himself. He couldn't seem to relax, to settle.

He found himself admiring her necklace—a large sapphire pendant on a golden chain. When he'd asked her about it earlier, she had laughed and said it was on loan from a jewelry store. This ball—like any gathering of the famous, the wealthy, and politically powerful—was being well-photographed by the media. The jeweler had wanted the publicity of having Relena Darlian, media darling and former Queen of the World, captured wearing his necklace would bring. It looked, Heero concluded absently, like a giant, sparkling tear.

The music changed, and the dance, thankfully, ended. "Heero," Relena said, looking distractedly over his shoulder, "I see the Minister of Agriculture—quick, let's catch him before he disappears again." Taking his hand in her gloved on, Relena pulled him along as she weaved her way through the crowd. The giant chandeliers above their heads cast down a rich, golden light that was flattering to older skin and made the more youthful guests absolutely radiant. The man Relena cornered, however, needed more than fetching lighting to make him attractive. He did not look happy to see Relena either but was ever so polite to her as she greeted him. "I was wondering if, Minister, if you might take a few moments to explain to me that bill you introduced on Friday during the Cabinet meeting. The part about shipping fertilizers to the colonies…"

Heero shut out her chatter as she let go of his hand so she could hook her arm through the Minister's and steer the old man out into the hall where they could hear better. It also prevented the minister from finding an excuse to escape. He and Relena settled on a bench, partially shielded from the casual glance by a large potted fern. Heero took up a post on the opposite wall. The Minister of Agriculture was probably the least threatening person here tonight. His political agenda was virtually harmless—the man's great love was fertilizer. Heero didn't have to worry about the old man suddenly pulling a knife on Relena. Still, he kept half an eye on the minister as he checked the other activity in the hall. An older couple sat chatting quietly on another bench farther down the hall. To his right, the door to the women's restroom opened and two giggly debutants bustled out. The guard that he had posted beside the bathroom—one of the freelancers—was missing, he realized. Inwardly, he sighed. He really hadn't wanted to bring in outsiders, but the Preventers were so short-handed these days that it was impossible to cover events like these without pulling agents off equally important assignments elsewhere. He'd just have to see where that idiot had gotten to. The idiot was a she, he recalled, with red hair and a face that he kept thinking he should remember from somewhere. He took five steps towards the bathroom…

Those steps saved his life as the gigantic hand of a mobile suit came crashing through the wall. He heard Relena scream as plaster, brick, and concrete exploded into clouds of white dust. Heero was knocked to the ground when a large chunk of the wall struck his back. Much later, he would realize that being trapped under the slab had actually protected him from serious injury, but right now, he was more interested in getting to Relena as the rest of the debris rained down.

"Relena…" he croaked, the effort filling his lungs with dust and making him cough. Dimly, he was aware of men—probably armed---swarming in through the hole the mobile suit had punched in the wall. He heard incomprehensible orders barked in that distinctly military fashion as feet scrambled over the pile of rubble on top of him. Relena was screaming—he couldn't tell if it was out of fear or pain… He tried to push himself up, to shove the slab of concrete aside, but it was too heavy.

Gunfire. The rat-a-tat-tat of machine guns carried by the intruders and the occasional pop of the Preventers' handguns. Relena's screams were growing fainter and fainter as if she were moving away from him. He shoved harder against the rubble. Then, he couldn't hear her any longer. He tried again and again to worm his way free, but it was no use.

There was a great rumble above him as the mobile suit withdrew its arm from the palace. Echoing booms of heavy armaments came from outside the palace walls. If he didn't know better, then he would have thought it was mobile suit fire.

"Push up," a feminine voice ordered.

He looked up through his dust-caked eyelashes. Slim legs encased in brown Preventers' boots stood beside the part of the wall that was pinning him down. The slab shifted slightly. He pushed against it yet again, and this time it shifted enough to the side to allow him to crawl out on to the pile of rubble.

The woman who offered him a hand getting to his feet had straight red hair cut off at the shoulder and cold ice-blue eyes. He recognized her—the guard that had abandoned her post. "Are you injured?" she asked.

He did a quick assessment of his condition—scraped, bruised, and there was a slight pinch in his chest if he breathed too deeply…a small rib fracture, probably. "No."

She nodded and then turned on her heel and sprinted down the hallway. Heero ran after her. The intruders had withdrawn out the main entrance of the palace and were now fleeing across the lawn, hustling a captive along with them. He caught a glimpse of a blue dress and blond hair and knew it was Relena. There was an armored shuttle parked on the far end of the lawn—if they reached that, there would be no catching them.

Two dueling Gundams stood between him and Relena—Trowa's Heavyarms and an unknown model. Either Trowa had already run out of ammunition, or he was worried about harming bystanders, for the pilot was using the Gundam's giant knife rather than any of its guns. The other suit—which vaguely resembled the Altron, though it was painted mostly jade green rather than turquoise—had a beam saber out. It was less a duel than a game of "keep away" as Trowa dodged the sizzling green energy sword.

The red-haired woman didn't pause to watch the Gundams but took off towards a clump of trees at the edge of the palace gardens. Acting on instinct, Heero tore after her, his ribs protesting. She's fast, he thought as he ran full out to keep up. She disappeared into the shadowy murk beneath the trees. He followed, branches tearing at his arms and whipping him in the face. He skidded to a halt when he broke into a clearing. The red head was just climbing into the cockpit of a powered up Aries as another person ran off into the underbrush—probably the person who'd just delivered the Aries (there had been no mobile suits in this clump of trees when he had done his sweep several hours before the charity ball began).

Heero sprinted up the mobile suit and, seizing the woman's arm, yanked her to the ground.

She landed on her hands and knees in the grass. "What the…?"

"I'm commandeering your suit," Heero informed her tersely as he settled himself in the pilot's chair and slapped the button that closed the door.

"Like hell!" And then, she was in the cockpit with him as the hatch closed behind her. It was very, very cramped.

"Get out," he growled.

"No."

"I'm going after that shuttle."

"So am I." She turned around and settled herself on his lap, holding one hand over her shoulder, "Harness," as the other flew across the controls.

This was…awkward, but he didn't have any other ideas besides drubbing her unconscious and tossing her out the hatch. Something told him that she had a very hard head. With a scowl to the back of her head, he pulled the five-point harness over his head and hers. Her hand closed around the strap as it passed across her shoulder. "Spread 'em," she ordered.

He blinked.

Then, he realized that the harness clipped into a slot in the seat currently covered by his leg. Shaking his head (what was wrong with him?) he complied. The harness barely stretched over the both of them, even though they were both thin. He wondered how effective it would be if she crashed the Aries. She adjusted the frequency on the radio and then lifted the mobile suit up and out of the clearing. Glancing down at the radar, she punched a few buttons to highlight the enemy shuttle. "J. this is Red, come in."

A very familiar voice crackled out of the radio, "J. here. Did you get the data?"

The young woman took a disk out of her jacket pocket and slid it into a drive built into the radio. "Transmitting now."

"Dr. J.?" Heero asked in surprise.

"Red, I thought you made sure this channel was secure," the doctor scolded.

"I did," she snapped. The Aries was skimming the trees now, on a path to intercept the shuttle.

"Then how come Heero Yuy is listening in?" Dr. J. demanded.

"He's in the Aries with me."

"Oh." Then, "Oh! Quite a tight fit, I imagine!" The old scientist sounded a little too amused by the situation for Heero's taste.

Apparently for the girl's taste too, for he saw her purse her lips in the faint reflection off the view screen. "We are in pursuit of the shuttle carrying Vice Foreign Minister Darlian. It appears to be headed in the direction of the Prague Interstellar Spaceport. Please contact them and have them try to detain the shuttle for as long as possible."

"Data transfer complete, and sorry, Red, I'm afraid I can't do that. Our orders, you see, come from the same person who gave the orders to the men on that shuttle. A bit of a conflict of interest on my part if I help you." The doctor put a strange emphasis on the word "you".

Heero blinked. He knew that tone and knew all the frightful implications of it. Nerve-endings felt momentarily raw as he remembered the last time he had heard it in J.'s voice.

"Mission acknowledged."

They both had said it. At the same time. He felt her stiffen on his lap with surprise. There was a small screech over the radio as J. disconnected. He opened his mouth to say something, but she suddenly jerked the controls, making the Aries swoop to the side. The shuttle was in sight now, about six miles out from the spaceport. They were still flying over trees—Romefeller had dedicated this land to a nature preserve or something—and a lake was off to the east. She throttled the Aries forward. They were going to catch it.

A flash of light shot up out of the trees, catching the Aries on the left side, knocking off course. She corrected almost immediate—he couldn't have done a better job he admitted—and turned to face the enemy that had just fired at them. It was a Taurus, painted the old OZ purple. "Taurus, retrofitted for atmospheric maneuvering," she muttered as she brought the Aries' chain rifle up to bear, firing off a brief burst at the other mobile suit.

The Taurus dodged, moving to the side with inhuman speed, and began firing back. Its beam canon sent flashes of green energy sizzling by on all sides as she struggled to evade its attacks. "A mobile doll," Heero said flatly. He recognized the fighting style.

"Where'd they dig that up?" she asked nobody in particular as she leaned farther forward, straining against the harness as she tried to stay one step ahead of the doll. The Aries—practically an antique—was vastly out-gunned by the Taurus, and she would need a lucky shot to take it out. Unfortunately, it wasn't letting her get any kind of lock on it.

The radar started flashing and a little siren went off. Heero looked down—two more Taurus mobile dolls had appeared from the trees. A shot from one of the new ones grazed their left flank. Then, one hit them from behind. Both Heero and the girl were thrown forward, her head smashing against the view screen, his striking her collar bone then slamming back against the head rest. Little lights exploded in front of his eyes. All around the cockpit warning lights flared red and tiny sirens demanded attention—right engine gone, both stabilizers failing. The Aries was going down, the remaining engine propelling them to the left as the damaged stabilizers spun the suit nauseatingly. The last thing Heero saw was a glimpse of the lake before black rushed up to consume him.


	4. Chapter 3

Trowa had been at his post in the ballroom when what sounded like an explosion had rocked the palace. Overhead, the giant chandeliers swayed violently, their hundreds of dangling crystals clacking madly. The guests started screaming.

He took off in the direction of the blast, skidding out into the hall ahead of the terrified guests who seemed to think that one person heading for the door meant "stampede". He stopped in the middle of the hall, mouth agape, as he saw what had caused the "explosion". A giant mobile suit hand had punched its way straight through the wall of the palace. And it was made of gundanium. A Gundam! he realized. Men armed with machine guns were climbing in through the hole surrounding the suit's hand. No uniform—just a ragtag and very scruffy looking bunch in street clothes. They weren't important.

He sprinted for the main entrance as the men opened fire. Bullets zipped by on all sides. A woman behind him shrieked. He didn't look back to see if she had been hit. He didn't want to know. He dove for the entrance's metal detectors to give him some cover, letting the momentum carry him safely out the door left open by the fleeing guests. Picking himself up, he headed for the car park. His truck—the giant flatbed—sat at the back of the lot, taking up most of eight spaces. On it, underneath the gray tarps, was his Gundam, Heavyarms.

He had no idea why he had felt the compulsion to bring it. Catherine had called him nuts. If the reporters that had been poking around all day had found the Gundam, it would have been a disaster played out through the media. The general populace felt there was no place for mobile suits in this post-war world.

Which would be true, he thought as he pulled the tarps off and then clambered up on to the back of the truck, except we just can't seem to put all the fighting behind us. He pulled himself up on to Heavyarms' chest and opened the hatch, lowering himself into the pilot's seat. Strapping himself in, he started up the mobile suit. The deep rumbling of the Gundam coming to life echoed in his chest, right behind his sternum. "How long has it been?" he asked himself out loud. A gauge above his head beeped at him. Low on ammo. His nod to peace—not keeping the Heavyarms fully armed. Anyway, it was almost impossible to obtain ammunition these days. He had a cache hidden away in Duo and Hirde's scrap yard, but that wasn't going to do any good here.

Careful of the truck, he brought the Gundam up into a standing position. "Unidentified mobile suit," he called over the radio, "Withdraw now or be destroyed." People, small as ants below him, scurried madly, trying to get away. He hoped they succeeded before the fight started. "I repeat, unidentified mobile suit, withdraw now or I will destroy you."

The jade green suit retracted its hand and straightened to face him. The suit's eyes flashed eerie electric green through the growing darkness. "That's the Gundam OZ called 03, isn't it?" the enemy pilot said over the radio. The voice was distorted by static and a heavy Asian accent, but it was still distinctly female. "The Gundam Heavyarms."

Trowa tensed, hand poised over the control to open fire. "Retreat now," he warned, one last time.

"I don't think so," she replied. He could hear the sneer in her voice. "This is Wren Davis, pilot of the Gundam Dragonbreak. Prepare to fight, Trowa Barton." The enemy Gundam raised its gatling gun and started shooting. His hand came down on the button, and the Heavyarms let loose with all it had. One volley, that's all the ammo he had. Once it was free, he dropped the arm and pulled out the small knife that had been designed as his melee weapon. The radar screamed at him as it acquired a new target—a shuttle making tracks away from the palace.

She laughed and pulled a beam saber out of a compartment in her suit's arm. "So this is the great Trowa Barton?" She lunged, and he brought his knife up to parry. The energy weapon struck metal with a shriek of distress that made him wince. He slid to the side, the Gundam's foot ripping up the grass on the lawn and displacing about a foot of earth, as he broke the contact. The radar went wild again as an Aries lifted up out of the trees and zoomed off after the shuttle. Heero, he thought. Had to be. He back-flipped the Heavyarms to avoid a hacking slash from the other Gundam. He couldn't win this fight—she was too heavily armed, ironically, compared to him—but there was no one else to face her. "I'm used to losing battles," Trowa whispered as he snuck a cut of his own in. The knife nicked off the jade-painted surface of the suit's hip, leaving a small scrape in the metal. Not enough. He backed off…waited…

She lunged. Slashed. Hacked. He dodged it all. But he didn't return the attack, not yet. "What are you doing?" she demanded, "Why won't you fight me? Give me an honorable fight, damn it!" She dropped the beam saber, still activated, to the ground. The grass beneath it burst into flames that shot out across the lawn. She didn't seem to care. "What's wrong with you?" she screamed over the radio. "Do you want to die, Trowa Barton? Is that it?"

"My name isn't Trowa Barton," his voice was low, hardly more than a whisper, but it carried over the radio.

"Then what is it?"

"I don't have a name," he replied. "I am nothing more than a nameless, faceless soldier on the battlefield. That is where I live, and that is where I will die. But not today. I will not die today."

"Then fight, person-without-a-name," she growled. "I…" There was a burst of static as the transmission was cut—overlaid by an incoming signal that his communication's package couldn't decrypt—momentarily. He reached down with one of Heavyarms' massive hands and picked up the beam saber, thumbing it off. He held it out to her, butt pointed towards the other Gundam. A risk, since she could easily activate it while taking it from him. Somehow, he doubted she would. The static faded away, and her voice came back over the radio. "I am afraid we will have to finish this later." The enemy mobile suit accepted the saber from him and saluted him with it before returning it to its compartment. "Until then." The Gundam leaped upward, transforming into a shuttle form similar to Wing Zero's before zooming off westward.

Trowa watched its white contrails slowly dissipate into the oranges and lavenders of the setting sun. It had been a long time since he had anyone to fight…besides himself.

"What do you think of my little distraction?" D. asked when his call got patched through to her. She had allowed visuals, for once, and he could see that she absolutely pleased with herself. The half of her mouth not hidden by the mask she always wore was curled upwards in a cruel smile.

"Is that what you're calling it now? Abducting Relena Darlian is nothing more than a distraction?" J. felt outrage rush through him. He had a bit of a soft spot for Relena—the girl had spunk even if her Peacecraft philosophies were foolish tripe. Secretly, he hoped the Aries would be able to intercept the kidnappers' shuttle.

"It worked, didn't it? Everybody will be so busy looking for the Vice Foreign Minister and that new Gundam that they won't notice our main agenda until it is too late." She folded her arms across her chest and glared through the monitor at J., daring him to argue.

Dr. J., though, was not going to let it go. "You sent the Dragonbreak? I thought it was only eighty percent completed!"

She nodded. "It was functional enough for our purposes. After all, in this time of world peace, who is able to oppose a Gundam?"

He shook his head but kept silent. There was madness in her brown eyes. Today was obviously not one of her rational days. She was having fewer and fewer of those lately, and it worried him. Again, he questioned the logic of following a mad woman…but then, he remembered his oath and, as he gazed through the static-fuzzed screen at the cold silver mask that hid her ruined face, he knew he would keep it. He owed her that much, at least. "Very well," he said, "I will call off Dacia and Heero. They were in pursuit of the shuttle."

"Heero? Heero Yuy?" D. leaned forward in her chair—her expression changing from smug confidence to an almost childish eagerness. He waited. Then, her face—what was not hidden by the mask—fell, and she slumped back in her chair. "Oh, the boy. Yes, well, call them off…I can't have them interfering. The girl did get the plans, didn't she?" He nodded. "Send them to me. I will speak with you later." The tone of her voice suggested that it would not be a pleasant talk. The transmission ended, leaving the old scientist staring at a blank screen.

He turned on the radio and adjusted it to the Aries' frequency. "Red, this is J. Come in Red." Static hissed back at him. "Red, this is J., come in," he repeated. Still nothing but static. Why weren't they answering?

At the bottom of a man-made lake northeast of the palace in Prague, a little fish exploring a new cave heard something it had never heard before. "…cia, Heero…come in…copy?"


	5. Chapter 4

Roberta picked her way along the rocky beach, electric lantern swinging from her hand. The setting sun had brought storm clouds, and those storm clouds had quickly opened up into a deluge of black rain. Before that though, she had seen flashes of light that had nothing to do with atmospheric conditions. What the hell were mobile suits doing fighting out here? She wondered. Come to think of it, what were mobile suits doing fighting at all? It's starting again, isn't it? She shivered inside her black slicker but not because of the rain. She had lived through too much. Way too much. She did not want to live through yet another war, even if all she did nowadays was watch the battles on TV. It was the only time she watched TV—when there was a war—her battered set tuned to the news channel as repetitive reports rattled off casualties and political stances. Her TV set had been on through the entirety of Operation Meteor and the Eve Wars, and most of Mariemaia's Uprising (she had been in Moscow, at Sister Tabitha's funeral, when that had started). She sometimes muted it when politicians were on—they knew nothing about the lives they tossed so casually aside. That Peacecraft girl had been the worse—made Roberta's teeth hurt just listening to her.

She thought she'd seen a suit come down over here, but she had been looking into the setting sun at the time and maybe all she had seen was another black spot in front of her vision. She was getting old—well, not really in the grand scheme of things…though she did have more than her fair share of aches and pains—and her eyes had to go at some point.

Her electric lantern did little to cut through the dark, but she thought she saw it glint off something small and metallic. Scrambling down off the rocks, she landed on a small sandy strip of beach. There was someone down here—two people in fact. Both dressed in the uniform of the Preventers. Both drenched, and she suspected not just from the rain. "Are you okay?" she called out as she skidded across the sand coming to a halt by the two entangled bodies. A boy and a girl, not old enough to be in law-enforcement really, but the wars had forced a whole generation to grow up too fast. She got no answer, so she placed two fingers against the artery in the boy's throat to take his pulse. It was a little weak, and he was freezing cold—wet, cold, but alive. The girl, however, might be a different story.

"Hey, wake up!" she ordered, shaking the boy's shoulder. He moaned and opened his eyes.

"Who? Who are you?" he asked, pulling back in surprise. His hand began to hunt instinctively for a rock or something to use as a weapon against her. She watched the hand scrabble through the sand with something akin to amusement. This kid was well-trained.

"My name's Roberta," she said quickly, before he could find a makeshift weapon, "I'm the caretaker at a church up the hill. I saw the battle." She pried the girl loose from his grasp and picked her up in a fireman's hold. "Come on, you can rest at the church."

He staggered a little as he stood but didn't limp. Roberta grunted as she put her foot on the first of many, many rocks and forced herself up. It was going to be a long trek back to the church. She was getting too old for this.

Something sparkled in the debris covering the floor of the hallway where the Gundam had broken through. Quatre rubbed his eyes—he had yet to sleep since the attack almost twelve hours ago—but there was really something shiny half-hidden under the rubble. He bent down and brushed the dust and small chips of concrete aside. It was a necklace, the golden chain broken, with a beautiful tear-shaped sapphire dangling from it. He turned the gem over, looking for an inscription or a jeweler's mark that might help him locate the owner—this looked like a very precious piece, and he was sure someone was missing it. What he saw made him frown. The gold backing on the jewel seemed to be made of two sheets of gold fitted around a filler. One piece had slipped, revealing that the "filler" was electronic. Hurriedly, Quatre used his fingernails to pry off the backing. A tracking device. He suddenly had a very good idea of who this necklace belonged to and how the Gundam had managed to hone in on her.

"Rashid!" he shouted to the big man who was prying bullets out of the wall down the hall. When Une had put Quatre temporarily in charge of the investigation, he had called in the Maganacs. "Contact Miss Relena's people and find out where her necklace came from!"

"Yes, Master Quatre," the big Arab replied. He pocketed the tweezers he had been using and immediately took out his cell phone.

"Would you like some coffee?" a voice asked from behind him.

"What? Oh." Quatre turned—Sylvia Noventa stood at the foot of the rubble pile, a cup of coffee in each hand. "Thank you. Coffee would be great." He scrambled down to the floor, stuffing the broken necklace into his pocket.

"I wanted to do something to help," she said with a shy smile as she handed the coffee to him. "Unfortunately, brewing coffee is pretty much the only thing I know how to do when it comes to investigating terrorist attacks."

"You could go home." As soon as those words left his mouth, he knew he didn't want her to. She looked very pretty this morning—she had changed into a pair of khakis and a pink blouse—and she certainly didn't look as if she had been up all night. Personally, Quatre was so tired that his face hurt.

"Your men still haven't had the chance to take my grandmother's statement. She was very upset last night, so I gave her a sleeping pill. They were kind enough to let her go lie down in one of the palace bedrooms."

"Is she all right?" He took a sip of his coffee.

Sylvia nodded sadly. "She had such hopes that there would truly be peace once Mariemaia's Uprising was put down by unarmed civilians. Last night's display made her feel for a moment that maybe Grandfather's death was in vain. I'm sure she'll be fine when she wakes up. She is a very strong woman." She flushed. "Please excuse my rambling—I guess I'm more tired than I thought I was."

"Don't apologize. It was very nice of you to make this," he held up the cup of coffee. "It's more useful than my investigation has been so far. I hope Lady Une manages to free up some Preventers soon to come and take over. I'm afraid I'm not very good at this sort of thing." He gazed sadly back at the milling Maganacs and the rubble.

"Well, I think you are doing a good job," Sylvia said. Her pretty mouth was set firmly. "If it weren't for your organizing, this place would be in chaos still, and the body of that poor man—the Minister of Agriculture, was it?—would still be buried under all the rubble. You really are doing a wonderful job."

Words failed him, and he could only manage a blushing smile.

"ALL PASSENGERS PLEASE PREPARE TO DISEMBARK."

The loudspeaker crackling overhead woke Wufei. Stifling a yawn, he ground the grit out of the corners of his eyes with his fists. All around him, the shuttle's other passengers stood up, stretched, and started pulling their carryon luggage out of the overhead bins. Wufei waited. It had been a thirteen hour flight from Earth to Colony F729—an opportunity to catch up on missed sleep. Ever since Zechs and Noin had left for the Mars terraforming project, the Preventers were short senior officers. Actually, they were down to just him, Heero, Sally Po, and of course Lady Une. The latter was unimpressed with any of the dozens of applicants trying to be promoted to the upper echelons of the Preventer organization. Wufei thought she was still secretly holding out in hopes that she could lure Trowa away from the circus and Duo away from his scrape heap. The woman's high opinion of the former Gundam pilots was right and proper, but Wufei knew that Duo and Trowa were too enamored with their civilian lives to leave them behind. They had found ways to exist beyond the battlefield. He hadn't.

He couldn't—at least not yet when there were still past specters haunting him. Reaching into the breast pocket of his shirt (his civilian shirt—he was traveling incognito), he took out a folded piece of paper. He didn't open it, just held it in his hand. It was a printout of an email he had received two days before, and he knew every word by heart at this point. He had certainly stared at it long enough. There was still business he must take care of. It was his duty to handle this.

With a grimace, he pocketed the paper and stood. He had to duck to avoid cracking his head on the luggage compartment. He'd grown quite a lot since the end of the Eve Wars and was five feet, nine inches tall now. Taller than Sally Po. That gave him a small measure of satisfaction. He had worked closely with the woman ever since she had recruited him for the organization (he had later learned that she had received a nice bonus when he enlisted…silly woman had neglected to mention that in her little recruitment speech…not that he particularly minded). They shared an office with their desks pushed together, facing one another. On one hand, it was convenient when they were discussing something. On the other, her mess tended to overflow into his tidy workspace. There had been many high-volume discussions on the injustice of her forcing her sloppiness on to him. He smiled a little at the thought of their debates. In the end, she always acknowledged him as the winner of them.

He retrieved his duffel bag from the overhead bin and impatiently made his way off the shuttle and into the hubbub of the colony's busy spaceport. F729 was part of the L5 colony cluster—home. Most (but not all) of the residents were of some kind of Earth Asian descent. People that he recognized as having Thai or Korean or, like him, Chinese blood pushed passed. Dress was an esoteric mix of casual, professional, and traditional. Two little girls in kimonos ran by, their blond hair pulled up in bouncy ponytails. The sight of them made him draw up short (the man behind him cursing as he nearly knocked Wufei over). He watched the girls as they scrambled after a brightly colored ball. It rolled to a halt on the carpet about a meter from his feet, and the older of the two gave him a flirtatious smile as she scooped it up. Her eyes, he saw, were slanted and her nose slightly flattened despite her Caucasian skin tone and golden hair. Her sister looked much the same. They could be Sally's daughters, he thought.

"Sir, do you know where you're going?" It was the gate agent. "I can give you directions if you need them." She had shut down her computer terminal and was standing in front of her podium, a stack of papers in the crook of her arm. She was clearly headed elsewhere.

Wufei fought down a flush of embarrassment as he stepped aside to let her by. "No, sorry. I know where I'm going."

"Ok then." She gave him a cheerful service-industry smile and bustled past, her high heels clicking on the hard floor.

As soon as she was gone, he turned back to watch the little girls play, but they were nowhere in sight. He shook his head, then shouldered his duffel bag. This was no time for distractions—he had business to take care of.

Hirde wasn't quite sure what caused her to wake, but she found herself, eyes wide open, staring at the digital clock on the nightstand. 3:49. They had to keep it on her side of the bed since Duo had a bad habit of turning the alarm off in his sleep. Before they had moved in together, he had kept his alarm under a pile of dirty laundry on the far side of the room—it was the only way to guarantee he'd get up on time.

As she lay there, the minutes went by, marked by the changing of the clock. Her mind wandered from the particulars of the scrap business she and Duo ran together to noting that no matter how hard she stared, she never quite managed to witness the clock's transition from one minute to the next. Eventually, she started drawing up the week's grocery list in her head:  
Bread  
Milk  
Rocky Road ice cream (for Duo)  
Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream (for her)  
Peanut butter   
Coffee (the biggest can available)  
Paprika (since the lid had come off the little bottle and ruined dinner the night before)   
Hamburger  
Printer paper  
Apples (red, not green, Duo wouldn't eat green)  
Tampons…

Wait, did she really need tampons? How many had been left in the box last month? Then, she realized she hadn't used any last month or even the month before. That was worrisome.

Quietly, she slid out from under the covers and took a step back away from the bed, waiting to see if the movement would wake him. He immediately flung out an arm to claim her vacated space as his, but he didn't wake up. He tended to sprawl, taking up as much of the bed as he could. She, on the other hand, after years of sharing a bed with her older sister and infant brother, kept to the edge, hardly moving. They worked well together like that.

Satisfied that he was still asleep, she padded barefoot to the bathroom. The air conditioning unit in the hall window blew cold air at her, making the skin on her bare legs prickle. She carefully closed the bathroom door behind her and turned on the overhead light. The sickly green glow of the digital clock had not been enough to spare her eyes from the light's attack. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, and, when it passed, she was digging around in the back of the under-sink cabinet. She had only been taking birth control tablets for a couple of months now, ever since a pregnancy scare. During the scare, she'd bought one of those home pregnancy tests, and it'd come in a three-pack.

She found one of the leftovers and briefly reviewed the instructions. It wasn't that complicated—pee on the stick, don't shake it, don't hold it upside down. She stripped the foil wrapper off the obnoxiously purple stick and did her business. Afterwards, she set it down on the counter and waited…and waited…and waited…

Slowly, a line appeared in the "Testing" circle, proving that the test wasn't past its expiration date (a minor miracle in it's own right—it was hard to get anything in the colonies before it expired).

Seated on the lid of the toilet, her legs pulled up to her chest, she was suddenly very cold in only her panties and Duo's Mickey Mouse shirt. She crossed her fingers. She crossed all of her fingers and crossed her big toes over the little ones beside them. Then, for good measure, she linked her thumbs together and held her breath. She wasn't quite sure what she was crossing her fingers for…

It had been like this the last time, the last scare that had put enough fear in her to start choking down the chalky anti-baby tablets every morning with her orange juice. The three minutes between the act and the answer. The three minutes where a stupid little piece of plastic dipped in piss held her life in its metaphorical hands. She knew in her heart that the time was not right for a baby. Hell, they were little more than babies themselves despite all they had done. Or, at least, that's how she felt every time she had to deal with some paper-pushing bureaucratic clerk who wouldn't let her do this or that simply because of her age. But, the last time, when a minus sign appeared in the "Results" circle instead of a plus, her stomach had clenched, and somehow, she'd felt worse than before she'd taken the test.

This time, she wasn't feeling any better about the whole scenario. In the back of her mind, she resolved to throw out that third test. Just having these things easily at hand was asking for an ulcer…

…Wait…there was something forming in the "Results" circle, dark pink splotches pulling together into a cohesive symbol…

"Damn it!" Hirde ducked her head, slamming her forehead into her kneecaps, and finding a bit of comfort in the sudden pain. She'd look really stupid walking around the rest of the day with twin circular bruises on her forehead. Why that seemed so important right now was beyond her comprehending.

She snuck a peak over at the plastic stick, its tip stained yellow with her urine. The plus sign still hadn't gone away. The directions had mentioned that the reading might change after ten or so minutes but to ignore it. Probably had something to do with drying or the chemical reaction winding down or something. The stupid little plus sign had just made her world go all topsy-turvy and it wasn't even going to stick around to see what happened. Figured.

Suddenly angry, she slapped the pregnancy test off the counter. It hit the floor and went spinning behind the waste basket. She gave it a good glare, then stormed out (careful, as always, to turn out the light).

Wherever that little tantrum had come from, it dissipated by the time she reached the bedroom…their bedroom. He was on his back, mouth open, snoring like a chain saw. She'd almost tripped over the comforter he'd kicked on to the floor when she came in. She watched him sleep for a few moments, in the eerie green glow of the clock. Part of her wanted to wake him up now and tell him, but as she reached over to shake his shoulder, she pulled back. No, let him sleep—they would deal with this in the morning. Sighing, she slid back under the sheet and pushed him back on to his side of the bed. It was going to be a long time until the alarm went off.


	6. Chapter 5

Heero dragged himself after the strange woman. She had scooped the red-haired girl up and taken off across the rocks as if the girl weighed nothing at all. His head throbbed and his body was utterly drained from the effort of saving both the girl and himself.

_The Aries had sunk straight to the bottom of the lake, warning lights turning lurid in the dark water. The cockpit was compromised—the lake began gushing in almost immediately. The motors that operated the hatch were broken—he would have to open it manually, and he couldn't do that until the pressure difference between the inside and the outside of the mobile suit equalized. To do that, the cockpit would have to completely fill with water. First, though, he had to get out from underneath the red head. She was unconscious, slumped forward on his lap, blood dripping down from the cuts on her face. _

_By the time he squirmed around her—pressing his back up against the hatch, facing her—the water was up to his waist. He tried again to open the hatch or move the suit with no results. Gravity and water pressure were the only forces at work in this situation, and they were ganging up to kill Heero and the girl dubbed "Red". _

_Then, it became an agonizing wait for the water to fill up the cockpit. The air was too warm, the water around his lower body too icy. Stuck in the middle, he had to fight not to gasp or shiver. There wasn't enough oxygen left in the air for either of those actions. He pulled Red's body up, tilting her head back so her face was above the water. Blood ran down her face in wet streaks, staining his arms and chest as he held her to him. _

_The water inched higher. _

_And then, there was no more air. The liquid ice crept up his nose and into his ears. He could no longer feel his feet inside his boots. His cheeks puffy with one last desperate gulp of oxygen, Heero clapped a hand over the girl's mouth and nose to keep try and keep her from inhaling too much water. With his other hand, he undid the manual lock and pushed against the hatch. Slowly, it lowered. Wrapping an arm around Red's waist, he pushed off, shooting out of the cockpit and into the open lake. _

_He kicked, propelling them upwards. His lungs burned as his body converted precious oxygen to carbon dioxide. The girl was a dead weight in his arms, threatening to drag them both down into the lake's murky depths. For a moment, as desperation born of oxygen-starvation grew loud in his mind, he thought about letting her go, relieving the ache in his arms. She was already unconscious…she would just drift slowly down to a quiet death. He had no idea how deep the lake was or how far the mobile suit had sunk. She could drown them both easily if he didn't let her go. His vision began to swim. No…he would not let her go. He kicked harder. _

_Finally, they broke free of the lake's watery grip. He gasped madly, filling his lungs again and again with sweet air. A storm had begun while they were underwater, he realized with surprise as lightning streaked across the sky overhead. An angry wind teased the surface of the lake into violent, rolling waves. Raindrops pelted down, beating a tattoo on his head and shoulders. He floated for a moment on his back, one arm looped under the girl's armpits to hold her head above the water and to keep her from slipping back under. Which way was the shore? The wind was blowing from the west, and he let the waves carry them along for a while until the burning in his muscles started to dull. Then, he began to swim—an awkward sidestroke—towing Red along with him. _

_By the time they reached a little sandy strip of beach, he was faint from cold and exhaustion. He let the waves dumped them rudely on the sand, then crawled on hand and knees, pulling the girl above the waterline. There, he collapsed, his face turned towards her. Her chest did not rise and fall like it should, so he mustered enough strength to hold his frozen fingers over her slightly parted lips. The faintest puff of air escaped them…and then another. He let his arm flop down, his hand coming to rest on her shoulder. The lake water had been freezing—they were both still at risk for hypothermia—but he was too tired… _

The church Roberta led them to was not so much a church but a cathedral, Heero noted when a bolt of lightning lit up the sky for a brief moment. She took them not through the large double doors at the front but rather through a small side door leading to a tiny apartment attached to the back of the church proper. The caretaker's apartment had been constructed at a much later date than the church itself or even the large north wing and was comfortably furnished with salvaged and out-dated pieces. Heero stood shivering uncontrollably, just inside the door, his mind too numb to think. Roberta carried the girl into the bedroom. She returned a minute later with a fluffy brown towel. "Get out of those clothes before you freeze to death," she ordered as she tossed the towel to him.

He caught it—barely—with shaking fingers and set it on an avocado green couch with a threadbare patchwork quilt tossed over the back. He pulled off the jacket of the Preventer uniform and let it fall to the floor. The clip-on green tie followed. He then tried to unbutton the shirt, but his fingertips were too numb to grasp the smooth olive green buttons.

"Here," Roberta said, standing up from where she had been fiddling with a space heater and coming over to him, "Let me do that." With astounding efficiency, she had the buttons down the front of his shirt as well as the ones at his cuffs and the fly of his pants undone and his boots unlaced. "There," she said as she stepped back. "There're dry clothes in the armoire behind you. We're about the same size, so there should be something to fit you. Don't have any of your kind of underwear though. Guess you'll have to go commando."

Heero blinked dumbly as she turned on her heel and went back into the bedroom, shutting the door behind her. He freed himself from the remainder of his sopping clothes then toweled off as best he could with shaking hands. The armoire, as promised, was filled with neatly folded clothes. He found a baggy gray sweat suit and a pair of thick white tube socks and put them on before collapsing on the couch. He pulled the quilt off the back and wrapped it tightly around him. The space heater, about three feet away, basked his face in its hot, dry warmth. After a few minutes, the shivering stopped, and he once again felt his eyelids growing heavy.

The Shinto shrine sat off the main thoroughfare not far from F729 spaceport. The small building with its orange-tiered roof was set back away from the road behind a high wrought iron fence and a shield of leafy trees. Only the very peek of the roof could be seen from the street.

Wufei climbed the steps that led from the gate to the temple. As he ascended, the noise of vehicles and the crowds died away, replaced by the chirping of a few small birds in the trees off to the sides of the stair. After about sixty steps, the ground leveled off as he stepped up on to the cobblestone path that led up to the shrine. A young male priest—dressed in the traditional white and blue robes—was scraping a twiggy broom lethargically across the walk. He looked up, curiosity plain on his face, as Wufei approached. "Good morning!" he called. "Is there anything I can do for you?"

"I am looking for Brother Oshua," Wufei responded. "I was told he was a priest here."

The young man frowned when Wufei mentioned the name. "He's here," the priest said, then made a visible effort to re-school his expression from dislike to bland. "He should be inside."

Wufei nodded his thanks and headed onward to the shrine. A tree stood by the entrance, hundreds of tiny pieces of paper tied to its sparse limbs. Each slip of paper was a prayer, he knew, and the artificial wind that blew through the colony carried the prayers to Heaven. As he climbed the steps to the shrine, one of the prayer slips came loose and fluttered down at his feet. Curious, he bent down to pick it up. Gently, feeling no sacrilege, he unfolded it and read the single character printed with painstaking precision on the inside:

Vengeance

The paper crumpled as he closed his hand into a fist. How familiar he was with this particular prayer. He did not pray, exactly, and certainly never tied the slip of paper to this tree, but how many times had this one word danced through his mind during meditation? Vengeance—revenge on the Alliance, on OZ, on Treize, on the world that no longer needed him. Vengeance—the chalice from which war poured in a ruby red gush richer than any French wine. Wufei had been drunk on it for so long. Now, he figured, even the lingering hangover had passed. But not for everyone, obviously.

He dropped the wad of paper into his pocket and went in. Inside, the shrine was dark and cool except for a fire crackling in a pit at the far end of the room. A large man with brown skin and a shaved head sat before the fire, his head bowed in prayer.

"Brother Oshua," Wufei said quietly as he came and knelt down beside the praying priest, careful to point his toes inwards so as not to inadvertently insult anyone who came in.

"Chang Wufei," the priest greeted him. He lowered his hands to his lap and raised his head, though he kept his gaze firmly fixed on the fire. "What brings you to F729?"

"Davis emailed me," Wufei answered. He too kept his eyes on the flames, his face growing warm in their heat. "What is it that Master O. plots now?"

"My brother is not the one controlling Wren these days—command of her was given to D. before the Eve Wars. My brother has, essentially, retired."

Wufei scowled. He had never met the operative known as D., but he knew of the mysterious leader well enough. D. had been the one to order Master O. to construct the Shenlong and find a pilot for it. Wufei had won the privilege of piloting it through his martial skills. "Are you sure?"

Oshua did not bristle at the needling as Wufei had wanted him to. Instead, he simply answered, "He has gone into seclusion on Earth—to meditate, to try and forgive himself for his sins. He writes to me once a month. The last message said simply: "I yet live".

Wufei nodded, "So he will be of no help."

"No, he must first tend to the needs of his soul before he can assist another. Tell me, Chang Wufei, what did young Wren speak of in her communication to you?" There was some hesitation in the priest's voice, which did not surprise Wufei—Oshua had always had a soft spot for Davis.

"She asked me if I was content to be nothing more than a redundant soldier. A prop in the stage show of politics," he answered bitterly.

"And what was your response?"

"I didn't send one. I need to find her though—before she does something to destroy all I've worked for these past two years."

"I fear," Oshua replied, "That it may be too late for that."

He awoke soon after sunrise, judging by the light flooding in from the window behind the couch. Roberta was sitting at the card table in the middle of the room, watching the news on a little black-and-white TV with the sound off, and drinking coffee. She didn't look nearly as intimidating in the light of day as she had the night before. She was right—they were about the same height (five foot ten)—and she had the build of one of the legendary Amazon warriors—broad shoulders, muscular arms partially hidden by the sleeves of a white t-shirt that clung to her breasts. Her long, lean legs were encased in a pair of black denim jeans and stretched out beneath the table. She was younger than he originally though—late thirties, probably, with crow's feet and a hint at laugh lines around her mouth. The white streak in her black hair was caused by a scar that started by her right eye and disappeared into her hair beneath her temple rather than by age.

He hadn't moved except to open his eyes, but nevertheless she said, "Well, you're awake."

He sat up, shrugging off the quilt and putting his feet on the floor. Roberta un-muted the TV.

"…authorities are still investigating the mysterious Gundam attack on a palace outside of Prague where the Waltz for the Children Charity Ball was being held to raise money for orphans on the L2 colony," the newscaster read from his notes. Heero got up and moved to stand behind Roberta in order to get a better look. The image over the newscaster's shoulder was a picture of the front of the palace, complete with the hole the Gundam had punched through the wall. "Killed in the attack was Alberto Dominga, the Minister of Agriculture, and Alfonz David and Malcolm Jayne, two freelance bodyguards hired by the Preventer organization to help with the security at the event. Vice Foreign Minister and former Queen of the World, Relena Darlian was abducted by the attackers, whose identities are, as of this moment, still unknown. We take you now, live, to a press conference at the palace in Prague where Preventer head, Lady Une, is about to give a statement."

The image of the newscaster was replaced by a full screen live video feed. Lady Une, dressed in her Preventer uniform, her sleek brown hair gleaming in the early morning sunlight, was standing behind a podium. Six microphones were wired to the top of the podium, and a boom mic could be seen hovering in the upper part of the screen. Behind her, Heero saw Quatre standing quietly off to one side, still in his tuxedo with all the medals, though he looked a little dusty. Beside him, in more casual clothes, stood Rashid and Sylvia Noventa. All three looked exhausted. Lady Une, who had probably had even less sleep than any of them, did not look a bit fatigued. In fact, she was practically radiating carefully contained fury. Heero was glad he was beyond her reach for the moment. The lady's wrath was like a sword, and it could cut indiscriminately when she was like this.

"At this time," the head of the Preventers said, "We are still investigating the identities of both the commandos and the Gundam who attacked here last night." She did not lean into the mics, like most people did. She didn't need to. Her voice carried well. "We have, however, uncovered some clues that we hope will lead us to Vice Foreign Minister Darlian." She paused for questions, her face expressionless to the untrained eye.

"Has a ransom note for the minister been received?" a reporter shouted from off-screen.

"Not at this time."

"What about the mobile suits? Where did they come from?" someone else asked.

"The Gundam that attacked the palace is an unknown model. We are still trying to identify who might have built it. The other Gundam, which acted to defend the guests at the charity ball, is the Gundam 03, also known as Heavyarms, privately owned by Preventer Trowa Barton. The Taurus mobile dolls that escorted the shuttle carrying the kidnapped Minister Darlian were built by OZ during the Eve Wars. A security camera at the Prague Spaceport managed to capture a picture of the serial number on one of the dolls, and we have traced the unit back to a lot that was decommissioned and recorded as 'destroyed' in A.C. 196. Obviously, we are looking into this as well." She turned to leave.

"Why did Barton bring his Gundam to a charity ball?" someone demanded.

Lady Une sighed visibly and turned back to the podium. "Preventer Barton tells me that he brought the Gundam Heavyarms to show a potential buyer. Several museums have expressed interest in acquiring one or more of the Gundams in the interests of historical preservation. No more questions please." She stepped down off the platform, Sylvia, Quatre, and Rashid trailing after her.

"That's a lie," Heero muttered.

Roberta muted the TV again as the station returned to its newscaster. "I know—no real Gundam pilot would ever sell their Gundam," she said quietly. A hand stole up to the gold chain hanging around her neck, and she toyed with the tiny gold cross that hung from it.

"That too," Heero agreed grimly, "But I meant that Trowa isn't a Preventer."

Roberta let out a short bark that might have been a laugh, "Now he is."

Lady Une's cell phone began ringing before she even stepped off the platform at the news conference. She unclipped it and glanced at the number—the President. She muted the ringing and returned it to her belt. She didn't have time to placate the doddering old fool right now. She had faxed him as complete a report as was possible at this early stage of the investigation a full hour before the press conference started. "Winner," she said over her shoulder to the sweet-faced former pilot of the 04, "I'm going to need you to complete the investigation here in Prague. Handle the palace, the spaceport, and, for God's sakes, find that damn Aries!" A local TV station had caught footage of the Taurus mobile dolls shooting down the rogue mobile suit. Fortunately, none of the major networks had picked it up yet, but there would be hell to pay when they did. In an era of peace, weapons like mobile suits weren't supposed to exist. And now, thanks to this fiasco, she had to justify the presence of four different varieties!

Winner, thankfully, didn't argue with her. He really didn't work for her, though she was arranging for him to be paid like a contractor (though he needed money like the Sahara needed sand). Thank God, he realized how dire the situation was and how short-handed the Preventers were. He really was a smart kid. Especially finding the tracking device hidden in Relena's necklace. "I'll send a team out to comb the woods for it," he assured her.

Une flashed her badge at one of the M-16 wielding guards at the palace doors, and he let her through. The attackers had shot the metal detectors inside to shit, so she didn't have to worry about the handgun, concealed at the small of her back by the uniform's jacket, setting them off. Each step she took across the carpeted hall made little puffs of dust rise up, she noticed.

"Miss Noventa," she said, turning to the young woman who was returning her ID to her pocket, "Do you and your grandmother have adequate personal security?"

The blond girl looked up, surprised. "We haven't bothered with bodyguards since Grandpapa was killed. We aren't very interesting, from a political perspective, now that he's gone."

Une forced herself not to frown (she had noticed several fine lines around her eyes the week before and had resolved not to scowl so much). "You don't have anyone?" Fools—the Noventas may not be politically active anymore, but they were still Old Money. Someone could get very rich abducting and ransoming the girl or her grandmother.

"There is Ruamsak," Sylvia replied, "He was my grandfather's manservant. Grandmother kept him on as a butler and a pilot. He's at the airport right now with the family jet."

"Do you or your grandmother have any pressing engagements in the near future?"

"We were going to go to Marseilles tomorrow," she answered quietly, "It's the anniversary of Grandpapa's death."

Une looked away. Lord, the girl made her uncomfortable! It was common knowledge that she had had a hand in orchestrating the coup de tat had reached its crescendo with the death of Field Marshal Noventa. She wondered how Quatre—who had been one of the pilots to attack the New Edwards Base (though it had been Heero Yuy who had destroyed the Field Marshall's shuttle)—could stand beside her and not feel guilt. She looked over at the blond pilot, who was gazing at the Noventa girl with a mixture of sympathy and adoration. He was obviously completely infatuated with her.

"One old butler is insufficient for a trip to a public cemetery," she informed Sylvia. "I will assign someone to escort you. Now, if you will excuse me." She nodded to them and headed off down a side hall. This was not the first time she had worked in this palace—two years earlier, she, as an OZ colonel, had been summoned here by Mr. Treize. It seemed like a life time ago.

She had established a base of operations in a suite of offices off the ballroom. Her aide, whom she had brought with her from Brussels, looked up as she entered. "The president's office has called three times in the last ten minutes," he informed her, "And your ward is here."

"Mariemaia?" This time, she allowed herself to frown. The child should be at her boarding school in Paris. What was she doing here?

He nodded. "She went to go get something to eat. Barton's also here—he's waiting in your office, as you requested."

"Thanks, Singh, I'll be in with Barton. Ask Mariemaia to wait out here for me, and if the president calls again, tell him I've fallen off the face of the earth and the cell phones aren't getting good reception." She opened the door to the inner office and went in. When OZ had inhabited the palace, this had been one of the rooms used to make video bites of various high-profile leaders in a "working" environment. After the ESUN had claimed the palace as government property, most of the frippery had been stripped out, leaving the polished teak desk with a pastoral scene inlaid on the top in mother of pearl as well as a high-backed black leather desk chair.

Trowa Barton stood against the wall beside the desk, hands clasped behind his back, his feet shoulder-width apart. "I'm not longer your commanding officer," Lady Une snapped as she crossed the room and took a seat behind the desk. "You don't have to stand at attention."

"But you are in charge here," he argued, quietly. But, he shifted a little. The pose became slightly less rigid. Une rubbed her temples—she could feel a headache borne of frustration and sleep deprivation sneaking up on her. "I suppose you want an account of why I brought my Gundam to Earth," he said after a moment.

"That would be nice," she said, sarcasm rich in her voice. "Since I just had to explain to the entire world why there is still an active Gundam roaming around." She watched his reaction closely and was disappointed when his neutral expression did not change at all. It was, she decided with an inward sigh, true to form for the young man who called himself 'Trowa Barton'. "Get one of those chairs." She pointed to a stack of metal folding chairs in the corner behind the door, "And come sit."

He did as she directed. They had been here before—in this same position—him sitting across from her, calculating in that cool head of his how best to phrase what he had to say so as not to arouse her suspicions. This time, though, she was not over-burdened with confusion and conflicting ideologies. Simply, Trowa had some explaining to do. "Well…spit it out," she ordered.

"You know I work for a traveling circus."

She nodded—she had seen a recording of one his and his sister's performances. Noin and Sally had tapped it when they'd gone on vacation several months before Mariemaia's Uprising. Une had been as impressed with Trowa's stoicism as she had been with his sister's skill with knives.

"It's expensive to transport something as large as the Heavyarms from colony to colony. I brought it to Earth to see if Howard could help me find a place to store it," he continued. His face was perfectly impassive behind those ridiculously long bangs. As usual. He was, she mused, such an elegant liar. And, it was nearly impossible to tell whether or not he was lying to her right now. This interview did indeed remind her very much of that first meeting where he had been the Gundam-pilot-in-OZ-uniform and she…well, she had been very confused.

"Who's Howard?" she asked.

"A Sweeper—he helped us out during the war."

"He was on Peacemillion, wasn't he?"

Trowa nodded.

She eyes him suspiciously for a moment, then sighed. "I can't tell if you're lying or not," she admitted. She reached up and pulled the back off of one of her earrings. Carefully, she removed the diamond stud and slid the back back over the post. "That annoys me."

"I apologize," he said evenly.

She took out the other earring and set the both of them down on the desktop. The sunlight coming in from the window behind her made the little diamonds twinkle. She poked one idly, and it spun, flashing, in a tiny circle. Barton's eyes stayed fixed on her face. She had always admired his focus. "I refuse to accept your apology…at least until this whole mess is dealt with. We're so short-handed…" Mentally, she cursed Zechs and Noin for leaving her in a pinch like this. She understood Zechs' desire to leave the Earth and colonies—indeed anything that had been significant in his first life—he had done more than any man could for the human race. (Except, perhaps, for Mister Treize who had given his very life). Nor, did she begrudge Noin following her heart. However, they left two very large holes in the Preventer hierarchy that Une was having a damnably hard time trying to fill. "Field Marshall Noventa's widow and granddaughter are planning on visiting his grave tomorrow. I'm assigning you to play bodyguard. With the abduction of Relena Darlian, we can't afford to take chances with any high profile figures like the Noventas, and their personal security is inadequate. I will adjust your pay accordingly."


	7. Chapter 6

Roberta had finished her coffee and left Heero to a breakfast of cold cereal. As he crunched his way through a bowl of wheat flakes, he took stock of his physical condition. No broken bones…for once. A large lump on his forehead from where his head had connected with the girl's shoulder during the crash but, luckily, no concussion. His hair would be sufficient to hide the inevitable bruise. Muscles—well, they all ached but that was easy enough to ignore. He had a few miscellaneous cuts and scrapes from who knows where, but none of them were currently bleeding. There was other pain, but it was pain that haunted him ghost-like, and he pushed it to the back of his mind. His body had not handled his last battle in Wing ZERO well. The doctors had not been able to identify just what exactly he had done to himself though. All in all, he felt pretty good for someone who had come within a hair's breadth of dying the night before.

When he finished, he rinsed out his bowl and set it in the sink. Then, he padded into the church to find Roberta. His feet, in their borrowed socks, whispered on the stone floor as he made his way down a gloomy hallway. The church was a replica of a medieval cathedral—slightly scaled down—but with plenty of ornate, gothic details. He stepped into the shadow of a pillar as a small group of nuns in full habit bustled by via a cross corridor up ahead. Despite his light-colored clothing, they didn't notice him. After they passed, he ducked through the door behind him and into the sanctuary.

The door opened up into a side aisle, next to a pew. The choir loft overhead cast dark shadows, and he wondered how anyone could read from the hymnals interspersed among the pews since there were no electric lights. Then, he saw a spill of candle wax running down the back of the bench and realized mass must be conducted by candlelight. Odd, but not unheard of. Prague had been one of the cities the Romefeller Foundation had strove to restore to its former glory. Heero had seen several archaic customs put back into practice in the handful of days since his arrival.

Slipping between the pews, he stepped out into the nave. Here, the ceiling arched high overhead, supported by stone columns so big around that it would take at least five people holding hands to encircle just one. Sunlight came in through small stained glass windows that ran the length of the galleries above the side aisles depicting various saints but could not quite disperse the shadows that lurked at the highest points of the roof. Looking up, Heero wondered idly if God was perhaps lurking up there, admiring the house man had built for Him. The thought made him snort, and he turned his attention to the altar area. Like the old basilicas of Rome (which had originally been designed as courts of law before Christianity came, he knew), the altar sat in the center of a rounded bulge at the end of the nave. Steps led up to the altar itself, which looked to be composed of a single block of solid granite. A tabletop with similar dimensions could have easily sat ten. An elaborately illustrated copy of the Bible sat open at the center of it, flanked by two heavy gold candlesticks. Both would make good bludgeoning weapons, he decided, the thought coming to his mind and being processed automatically. Almost subconsciously.

What really drew his eye, however, was the rose window above the altar. It did not portray the Virgin Mary or Jesus Christ or any of the usual subject matter but rather an angel in black armor like that of a samurai. The angel—beautifully androgynous—had removed its helmet and held it under one arm. The other hand reached out imploringly towards the viewer as if it were reaching for something just beyond its grasp. Its black hair flowed wild and unbound. The artisan…no, the artist, had worked tiny pieces of clear glass into the hair so that, with the sunlight streaming through, it gave the effect of luminous stars. Behind the hair, behind the armor, great purply-black bats sprouted from the angel's back, extended in flight.

The red-haired girl was slumped down in the front pew with her legs stretched out in front of her. She too was looking up, studying the angel. He sat down beside her and glanced over at her. She was about four inches shorter and much thinner than their hostess, so the clothes Roberta had loaned her—an orange t-shirt and a pair of blue jeans—hung loose and baggy around her slender frame. Her flame-colored hair was pulled back from her face in a nub of a ponytail…already pieces of it were falling free. A bandage was wrapped around and around her head, hiding the cuts on her forehead behind a big white strip. Surgical tape held another bandage to a wound on the inside of her lower right arm, and a Band-Aid was plastered over her left cheek, right under the eye. She looked wan and tired, he decided, but alive.

"I suppose I should thank you for saving me," she said after a moment. "Roberta said the Aries ended up in the lake." She looked away from the window and met his eyes. Hers were blue, he realized, a vivid, almost electric, blue. "Dacia Arkush."

"Heero Yuy—but you already know that. You work for Dr. J.?"

"As you did." Those were three words positively loaded with implications, and she knew it as well as he did. They regarded each other in silence for a moment, then both turned their attention back to the window. It was easier to look at the angel than at each other.

"It looks almost like a Gundam," he said, after thoroughly scrutinizing the helm under the angel's arm.

"It could be," she murmured. "This church is only thirteen years old…I read up on the area before coming here."

"Hn." His eyes moved from the helmet to the angel's face. "What was on the disk you had?"

"Blueprints for the five original Gundams. Treize Khushrenada tried to hunt all five of them down and restore them during the wars. He actually found and repaired Epyon."

Heero blinked. He of course knew that there had been Gundams running around the time the Alliance formed, but he hadn't thought Epyon one of them. Though that did explain some things like the similarities between Epyon and the modern Gundams (he had noticed several small things in the design that screamed "J."). "I piloted the Epyon for a while," he told her.

"Really?" She sounded genuinely surprised. So, Dr. J. hadn't told her everything. Though, Heero wondered if the scientist even knew about his brief stint as the Eypon's pilot.

"Treize gave it to me while he was in exile. I used it in the Luxembourg Massacre." It had been the reason Luxembourg had turned into a massacre, but he didn't say that.

"So that was you…" Apparently, she didn't need him to say it. Somehow, she knew and, maybe, understood. Dr. J. had probably told her about the ZERO system. "Why did you trade it for Wing ZERO?"

"It was Treize's 'Devil'. I figured it would fit Zechs better."

There was silence for a few minutes as they both pondered. "J. told me once that Epyon really is the Devil," she said quietly, "And like the Devil, it will never die. Not until the world ends."

"It was destroyed with Libra," he replied gruffly.

"Zechs wasn't, and it's easier to rebuild a mobile suit than to bring a man back to life. Somebody will reconstruct it."

"Like Dr. J."

She didn't argue. Above them, a cloud moved in front of the sun, making the stars in the rose window go dim. He looked back over at her. She's pretty, he thought. Not like Relena was pretty—vibrant and sunny and perfect—but still very attractive. The contrast between her hair, her eyes, and her translucent white skin was startling. And, she radiated a silent intensity that sent a tingle down his spine as he watched her.

Duo made occasional trips to Earth—usually under the pretense of junkyard or Sweeper business—and he invariably tried to take Heero out to "meet people". Ever since Duo and Hirde had started dating, Duo seemed determined to find someone for Heero. Duo Maxwell was in love, and he liked being there. And, being Duo—who was a very generous, giving person—he wanted everyone else to feel what he was feeling. Unfortunately, Heero had no social skills, and he knew he had none. It made him very self-conscious when Duo took him out to meet people. As for his sexuality…well, as Duo had put it, there was just "a big question mark". During the war, there hadn't been time to think about things like that. And now…well, sometimes he wondered if Dr. J. might have tinkered with his libido along with everything else. Women baffled him except for women like Noin or Sally, who he thought of as soldiers first and only rarely recalled their gender. With Relena, it was more a comfort thing. She had gotten into what Duo referred to once as his "bubble" and refused to get out. Now, he was just used to her. The men who approached him when he and Duo went on one of their outings made him uncomfortable, but, as Duo pointed out, those were not good representations of the gay population, seeing as how they tended to be men who hit on everything that moved (and some things that didn't) besides being completely toasted…

"You're staring," Dacia informed him.

Heero started to get embarrassed, but then blinked as she began to thoroughly scrutinize him. It was more than a little unnerving. She started with the socks and worked her way up slowly. It took about a minute, total, to complete her inspection. It was the same kind of scrutiny that he would use on a mobile suit during mission prep. Ensuring that every system from primary to secondary to back-up was fully functional. Threat analysis. She was acknowledging him as a weapon…a walking, talking, living, breathing weapon of mass destruction. People did that to him a lot—regarded him as if he were an inhuman machine designed only to kill. They, though, always had fear lurking behind their eyes. This girl only had something akin to sympathy. Because, she was a weapon too. He had known that since she had first helped him out from under the rubble at the palace.

"Good—you found each other." Roberta's voice echoed through the sanctuary. Both Dacia and Heero turned in the pew to watch as she came down the aisle. Her long hair was wind-whipped, and she wore a black trench coat that flapped behind her as she walked. "How do you like my window?" She nodded in the direction of the rose window.

He glanced from her to the window and back again. He now realized why the angel looked vaguely familiar—the artist had used Roberta for a model, taking her features and refining them into an unearthly beauty.

"You made that?" Dacia asked.

Roberta nodded. She stepped up even with the end of their pew and regarded the masterpiece—her masterpiece—high above them. "After the…well, after, I apprenticed with an elderly gentleman who taught me how to work the glass. The church was being built at the time, so I contributed small pieces, like the windows over in the cloister, and helped with some of the bigger ones." She looked up at the windows in the galleries, "St. Michael's robe," she pointed, "The background of St. George. The original rose window was all my master's work—Christ in the center with four archangels around him. God, it was beautiful." She was quiet for a moment, her eyes not really seeing the altar in front of her or the window above it. "It was the finest piece of work he ever did. And the last—once the window was installed, he insisted I take all the commissions that were sent to him. He claimed he could never make a finer piece." She turned to them, "About two years ago, some OZ and Alliance troops decided to have it out with mobile suits not far from here. One of the concussions shattered the window."

"I'm sorry," Heero apologized. He didn't know why.

She shrugged as if to say that it didn't matter, but he could tell that the loss bothered her very much. "When my master was working on the design for it, he used me for the model for the archangels. Ironic. Anyway, he did five sketches. Four went to making Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, and Israfel. The fifth he gave to me. I think he knew his window wouldn't last long, because he told me to keep the sketch for the day when it needed to be replaced. 'Beauty's just transitory, Bertie, other things are forever'—that's what he told me. He made me swear I'd make a new window based on the sketch, instead of trying to duplicate his work. The old bastard. He called it my 'salvation'."

"Is it?" Dacia asked.

Roberta sighed. "Some days, I think so. Others…I'm not so sure."

Heero watched her eyes. She looked tired, weary. "What about today?"

She smiled, chasing away the weary look so easily that he knew she was faking. "Today's pay day—how could I not? That, and, strangely enough, I have two Gundam pilots sitting in my church."

"How'd…" Heero started.

"I'm not…" Dacia began.

Roberta held up a hand to silence them. "You," she said, pointing to Heero, "Are on the news all the time, even if you're hiding behind that Relena girl. Besides, I would know just from your code names." There was a twinkle in her eye, and a tiny, nostalgic smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. "I knew the people you were named after. I was one of the original Gundam pilots." She laughed at the look on his face. "Surprised? I bet whoever trained you told you we were all dead."

"He did," Dacia replied. Heero nodded in agreement. He had asked about the first Gundams—people still talked about them now and again when he was young—during his training with Dr. J. The old man had sort of flinched and muttered something about those Gundams being long gone. Then, Heero had been ordered to do wind sprints for an hour.

"Who was it? Gibson or Johanasen?"

"Who?"

"Who trained you? Professor Ronnie Gibson or Dr. Strom Johanasen?"

"Dr. J.," they answered in unintended unison.

"How's the old fart doing?"

Heero looked to Dacia—she had seen him last—and she just shrugged. He turned back to Roberta, "Why'd you figure it was either Dr. J. or Professor G.?"

She shrugged out of her trench and settled, cross-legged, on the floor in front of their pew. "You're not Asian, so it wasn't Oshua, and Sven and Hyglac are too squeamish to employ the kinds of methods that would have been used to achieve your kinds of skills." She nodded to Heero, "I've seen some of your exploits on the TV—I'm a news junkie, if you hadn't figured that out." Her face was grim again, "Gibson and Johanasen have always been ruthless." The last word was a hiss. "What do they have you doing now?"

"Nothing," Heero answered.

Roberta raised a dark eyebrow at him, "I wasn't talking to you."

He leaned back in the hard pew, chastised.

"Heero and I were trying to stop the shuttle that abducted Vice Foreign Minister Darlian," Dacia said coolly.

"That's not what I asked!" Roberta barked. The bellow echoed off the walls, the floors, the pillars, reverberating through the sanctuary. Both the young pilots looked at her, startled. She had changed, Heero decided, something not-quite-physical had come over her, and he knew he was now looking into the eyes of Roberta the warrior. The avenging angel who smote her foes with a fiery sword. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, she was more intimidating than any person he had ever seen. It had been a long time since anything had scared Heero. Too long. But now he felt fear uncoil like a waking dragon in his gut. He dared a glance over at Dacia—her knuckles were white from where she clutched the edge of the pew.

He wasn't afraid that Roberta would kill him or torture him or even find a way to eat his soul, if he had one. No, he was more terrified of what she represented. Here was a Gundam pilot, in her thirties, and she still had the monster lurking inside of her. It boded no good for him, a year away from the war and still uneasy with life.


	8. Chapter 7

"When was the last time you were violent, Chang? The last time you split your knuckles on someone else's jaw as you pounded their face into a meaty pulp like just so many pounds of raw, bloody hamburger? It's been too long for me, I think. I'm starting to forget that sweet, coppery taste of blood as it slides across my tongue—as I suck it down and revel in it."

In Wufei's nightmarish memory, Wren laughed and slurped at the blood welling up on her small fist. The liquid stained her lips red, her teeth pink, he saw, horrified, as she lapped her tongue cat-like across the wound.

Wufei woke with a start in his hotel room on Colony L5-F729. The room was silent except for the hum of the air conditioning unit in the corner and the rattle of his rapid breathing in his chest. The clock on the nightstand proclaimed it to be only a little after midnight, but harsh, unnatural light forced its way in from a crack in the thick curtains. Parts of this colony—especially near the spaceport docks—never got dark, so the light said one thing, the clock said another, and his poor, abused circadian rhythms a third.

Sliding out from beneath the sheet, he crossed the room to the little adjoining bathroom, wearing only his briefs. The AC blew cold air against his sweat-slick skin, and he had to fight the urge to shiver. He turned on the faucet and splashed lukewarm water at his face. Whether due to fatigue or lack of light, his aim was bad, and water dribbled down his chest in rivulets. "I've spent too much time on Earth," he muttered to himself.

He was a little more awake now—a little calmer—though still on edge from the dream. "Why did my subconscious choose that memory for me?" he asked out loud. The answer came to him almost immediately—because this was the first time he had thought about her in over two years. Since he had been judged worthy to pilot Nataku, and she…well, she had been given other, less honorable tasks to complete. He suppressed a shudder as the image of her licking her knuckles flashed through his mind again. Wren was not a warrior—not as he was—she was something else, something less…wholesome. Despite her rigid upbringing, she cared little for honor or valor. In her eyes, the fight was a means of drawing blood. And she liked blood.

He dried his hands, face, and chest with a small hand towel. If he was awake, then he might as well attend to business. His laptop sat hibernating on the small table in the corner under the window. He thumbed the standby button then pulled on his jeans as he waited for it to wake back up. He expected his mailbox to be full of messages from Une and Sally demanding his return immediately—he had watched the news before falling asleep and knew that the Vice Foreign Minister had been abducted. He wouldn't go though. Finding Wren and putting a stop to whatever schemes she was involved in far out-weighed the need to save Relena Darlian. Besides, Heero would take care of Relena—he always did.

There was one message from Sally:

_Wufei,  
I know you watch the news, so I won't bother to tell you what has been going on. We're swamped here at Preventer Headquarters, but I'm sure you've already figured that out for yourself. We could use your help, but I know this trip of yours is more than a simple vacation. I trust you, Wufei, to know whether or not you should come home or stay. I hope you find what you're looking for.  
Love,   
Sally _

The silly woman always signed her letters—even in-department memos—with the word "love". The first time he had received something from her (it had been a forwarded email full of jokes), it had angered him. He had confronted her in her office that day. It was simply, she had explained, a habit of hers since childhood. The letters she and her father had exchanged when he was away fighting had always been signed "love", so she had fallen into a pattern of always doing so. Then, she had teased him about making such a big deal of it.

He winced as he recalled how embarrassed he had been. He had behaved quite foolishly. But, a couple of days later, they had made the coffee run together, and she'd talked about her father.

"_Did they give us the correct brew for Une?" Wufei asked her as she accepted a tray with six coffees stuck in it. _

_Sally put the tray down on the coffee shop counter and took the lid off the first cup, sniffing it. She made a face, "Yuy's," and returned the coffee to the tray. _

"_I still think we should just buy a can of turpentine and serve it to him hot," Wufei said. "He burned off his taste buds long ago—he'd never know the difference." _

"_My dad used to drink Turkish coffee like Heero does," she said as she sniffed another cup. "This one's Decker's. He used to say that soldiers either had to drink, smoke, or partake of coffee strong enough to melt the enamel off your teeth." She checked a third cup. "This is yours." He accepted it and took a sip. "He was a tank man for the Alliance," she continued. "He fought for them when they were first unifying all the separate little countries. That was the first time, you know, that Earth had the chance to get this peace-thing right." She put the lid back on the fourth cup. "It took what? Three tries to get it right, and then we almost lost it all to a ten year old." She looked down at the two cups she hadn't tested yet. "One of these is Une's gourmet brew and the other's Ives' hot chocolate. Want to bet the last one I pick up is Une's?" _

_He reached over and plucked the one on the left out of the tray. "Try this one first." _

"_Why don't you test it?" _

"_Unlike you, I can't tell coffee blends apart just by smelling them." _

"_It's a talent, I know," she said, giving him a smile. She popped the lid off and gave it a sniff. "You were right—this is Une's. You've got skills, Chang." _He remembered how he had bristled when she said his name like that. She always called him "Wufei", never "Chang".

"_Did you know that my dad was one of the first to pilot a Leo?" she asked as she headed out to the car with the coffees. It was a Preventer vehicle—an armored Humvee with bullet-proof windows—and she drove. He still hadn't bothered to get his civilian driver's license. "He worked security—I don't know why they gave a security post to a guy who drove a tank, but they did—for the test group that worked on the first mobile suits. He said one of the test pilots, a woman, let him sit in the cockpit of the very first mobile suit. It was made out of gundanium—the first couple were. It wasn't until they built the Tallgeese that they started making them out of neo-titanium. Anyway, he said it was one of those once in a lifetime opportunities." She set the tray down in between the seats and settled in the driver's seat. He buckled himself into the passenger seat and put the tray on his lap so it wouldn't slide. _

"_I imagine it was," Wufei agreed. "So he was promoted from tanks to Leos when the Alliance came out with mobile suits?" _

"_He said that after that woman let him sit in the gundam, he couldn't not try and pilot one." She started the truck and backed it out of the parking space. The parking lot of the coffee shop was narrow, but she somehow got the Humvee turned around without hitting anything. "I think he was little in love with her as well as the machine," she added quietly. "My parents were separated by that point in the war. My mother didn't want to be married to a man who was never home. Never mind that it was his job that kept him away." _

Wufei hadn't known until then that Sally had come from a broken home. Actually, he hadn't known much about her at all except that her father was Chinese and her mother English. He leaned down and typed off a quick reply to her, then sent the email, and closed down the computer. It was time to find Wren.

Sally woke up with the shape of a paperclip imprinted into the side of her face. She had fallen asleep at her desk. Not surprising since she hadn't gone home since the attack on the Prague palace. Une had left her in charge of HQ while she was off handling damage control in Prague.

The sludge in the bottom of her coffee cup did not look promising. Taking it in hand, she headed for the employee lounge. The clock hanging on the hall wall said it was 10:40pm, but Ives and Decker were in the lounge. Decker, a good-looking blond former Treize Faction member, was pouring himself a cup of coffee. Ives, a lanky anti-Alliance rebel from the Congo, was asleep on the lounge's couch with a newspaper over her head.

"Tell me that coffee's hot," Sally said to Decker.

"Honey, you're in the luck." He gave her a dazzling smile that revealed perfectly white, even teeth. They'd dated for a few months before he broke it off. She hadn't been as committed as he was, and he wanted to avoid undo heartache. Times like this, she decided, as she held her out her mug, she wished she could be more committed. But, a charming accent and a hand with Mr. Coffee were not enough to keep her in a relationship. She wanted depth. Emotional baggage. Someone who could and would argue with her.

Steam rose up as he poured the rich, dark brew into her cup. "I could kiss you," she teased. She took a gulp, even though it burned her mouth and throat. "Beautiful, beautiful caffeine." She turned her attention to the woman on the couch. "Is she awake?" she asked Decker.

It was Ives who replied from under the newspaper, "No."

"Any luck on tracking that shuttle?"

"The Orbiting Space Traffic Tracking Net has been on the fritz for the past couple of weeks. The shuttle slipped out through one of the holes, and then we lost 'em."

Sally considered that as she took a sip of her coffee. The caffeine was already doing its thing, waking her up. "Any chance OSTTNet was sabotaged?"

Ives gave her a thumbs-up sign. "Very good, boss, very good," the black woman muttered sarcastically. "I've got the OSTTNet computer scanning itself for Trojans and other rogue programs. It should be finished in…" The newspaper was raised a few inches so Ives could look at her watch "…six hours."

Sally nodded absently, and then realized Ives couldn't see her, "Good, stay on it." Blessed coffee in hand, she wandered back to her office. No leads—and no warnings. Her fingers tightened around the mug's handle. There had been absolutely no warnings at all before the strike. No whispers in the underworld, no large supplies of gundanium alloy disappearing… In fact, there had been very little trouble from the Colonies at all since the end of Mariemaia's Uprising. It had been the Earth that kept the Preventers hopping—countering radicals, rebels, and even religious fundamentalists. That last lot gave her a major headache. She sighed—how were they supposed to prevent violence when they had no warning? This reminded her in too many ways of Operation Meteor.

She sat back down at her desk and pulled up her email. Wufei had replied.

_Dear Sally,   
I am afraid I am unable to return to the Earth at this point. I fear that the recent appearance of a new gundam may be tied to aspects of Operation Meteor that have not yet been made public. I will take care of that potential threat and then return. Good health and long life to you and Lady Une.  
Sincerely,  
Chang Wufei _

He had put his name in Chinese characters underneath the electronic signature. She smiled. There was something so poetic about Wufei that electronic discourse couldn't do justice to. Funny though, that he mentioned Operation Meteor when she had just been thinking about it. It reminded her of something...

She pushed back her desk chair and went over to the bookcase against the far wall. The only light in the long room that she and Wufei and Heero used as an office was the one shining down on her desk, but she didn't need light to find the book she was looking for. Her hand traced along the spines of mobile suit manuals, binders of mission reports, and the few paperback novels that people brought in and then forgot to take home. Most of these had been Noin's—the mysteries, the thrillers, the random Thai cookbook—had all belonged to Sally's last partner. Sally felt a twinge as her finger brushed over the cover of the cookbook. It had been a year since Noin and Zechs had left for the Mars terraforming project. She got emails every couple of weeks, full of technical chatter about the project and some odd gossip. Sally always sent replies with news about the people Noin had left behind—Amber Benson from the mail room getting married and then immediately getting pregnant with twins, Heero joining the Preventers, working with Wufei—but she wondered if Noin cared anymore. It was hard losing your best friend.

Finally, she found the book she was looking for. It was a leather-bound journal she had filled during her early days as an Alliance medic. Her dad had kept work journals, recording what he did each day in the service of the army (well, what he could write about without violating security codes), and she had tried originally to do the same. Her entries stopped right around the time that Duo Maxwell had broken Heero out of her hospital, and they had both jumped out a hole they had blown in the side of the building. A smile quirked up the side of her mouth—trust those two to know how to make an exit. Heero still had a bad habit of blowing things up. Some of the boys down in Armaments kept a running tally of how many grenades Yuy exploded in the line of duty.

She pulled the journal out and set it aside. Behind it, pressed flat against the back of the bookcase, was one of her dad's work journals. She had brought it in to read during her "spare time", but she hadn't wanted Wufei to find it. Not that he read much off this bookcase except for those things pertaining to work, but still…her dad had mentioned her several times and she didn't want Wufei reading about her as a child. She had been a gawky, awkward child and an even gawkier, more awkward teen.

She flipped it open and headed back to her desk. This long day was going to get a little longer.

"Hirde, what's this?" Duo asked. There was only curiosity in his voice, but Hirde, in the process of toasting waffles, winced as she turned around. Duo, fresh from the shower and wearing only a pair of boxers, was standing in the doorway to the kitchen. He had a little purple plastic stick pinched between two fingers.

"A pregnancy test," she answered, her voice cracking half way through the word "pregnancy".

Duo blinked. "Oh…" he looked at the stick again, "Why was it behind the trashcan?"

"'Cause I got angry at it," Hirde replied. She turned back to the toaster and drummed her fingers on the counter. Why wouldn't the frozen waffles cook faster? She was beginning to think the freezer was set too low… My, she was being evasive this morning. Couldn't even look her own boyfriend—who swore up and down (and she was inclined to believe him) that he loved her—in the eye.

She wasn't looking at him, but she could still feel the change that went through him as he woke up a little more and started to consider the implications of the device he was holding. "Hir…why were you angry at the test?" he asked cautiously.

She bit down hard on her lip and felt all the muscles in her back tense. "Because it came back positive"—the words all came out in a rush.

"WHAT?" Duo's bellow echoed throughout the tiny kitchen. Hirde winced again. His shout had been all volume, no tone, so she wasn't sure if he was angry or…or…

Strong arms seized her around the middle and swung her around and around. "I'm gonna be a dad! I'm gonna be a dad!" Duo crowed. Then, realizing where their child currently was located, he let go in a hurry.

Hirde staggered back a little, bumping into the kitchen table. "I take it you're not angry," she said quietly. His face was absolutely alight with a huge smile. She couldn't help but return it.

"Angry?" he looked a little confused, "Why would I be angry?"

Hirde just shook her head and stepped forward, wrapping her arms around his waist. He had shot up in the past two years since the Eve Wars—sometimes an inch in as little as two weeks—until he reached six feet. She felt so short compared to him. Heck, she felt short compared to everybody. She felt a tear trickle down the side of her nose. It curled along the underside of one nostril then fell on to her lower lip.

"Shit, babe, are you crying?" He turned her face up towards his. "Why?"

The concern in his eyes and all the tension she had been under since early morning suddenly became too much. She burst into tears. "I…I dunno," she managed to get out between sobs.

"We're going to have a baby!" he repeated. He looked like a small child at Christmas who had just been given a puppy…only happier, if that were possible. His strong arms tightened around her.

And then a wave of nausea hit her like a brick. She wriggled out of his grip and took off down the hall towards the toilet.

She barely made it.

Of course, there was nothing in her stomach, since the waffles were still cooking (ah hell, they were probably burnt now), so all that came up was stomach acid and a little bit of what might have been last night's cheeseburger. "Shit," she moaned, wiping her mouth as she collapsed down on the floor in front of the toilet. The linoleum on the back of her bare legs was so cold.

Duo came in and looked at the mess in the toilet. His nose wrinkled, but he didn't say anything…just closed the lid and flushed. Then, he sat down behind her and wrapped his arms around her, resting his chin on her shoulder. "You ok?"

"I guess this is what they call morning sickness," she said weakly.

"You want me to make an appointment with Doc Lazarus?" he asked, naming the outlaw doctor who lived down the street. The old man was the closest thing they had to a medic in this sector of the colony. He was also a good friend of theirs.

She leaned back into him, letting him support her. "That'd be nice."


	9. Chapter 8

J. stepped off the shuttle, bag in hand, as D.'s chief aide and two of the guards came sailing towards him.

"You're not supposed to be here," the aide, Evelyn Rose, said to him, a note of distress underlying her voice.

"I want to see D.," he told her. She just shook her head reluctantly. J. frowned. Evelyn Roe had spent her entire life attending to D.--twenty years of trying to anticipate and cope with the woman's wildly changing moods. It was not a life that J. would wish on anyone, but someone had to deal with D. on a day-to-day basis. He felt a twinge of guilt. If he had been a better man, he might have embraced her right then, but instead he turned to the guards, handing his bag to the nearest one. "Begin unloading," he barked. Then, to D.'s aide, "Walk with me."

She glided across the hangar beside him. It had been G.'s idea to use her as a sort of living doll when she was just an infant. The child had the power to soothe D. when she was upset and cheer her when she was depressed. When D. was lucid, she ignored Evelyn Rose, as if the idea of occasionally needing a child to comfort her offended her rational sensibilities. And then, there were times when not even God Himself could do anything to touch D.'s irradiated brain.

Evelyn Rose was a pretty young woman with big, brown, almond-shaped eyes, smooth, transparent, white skin, and long, brown hair. She was also extremely smart—there had been talk of using her in Operation Meteor, but J. had squashed that idea. She was too compassionate, too loving. How she had escaped being infected with D.'s madness was one of the greater mysteries of the universe.

"How bad is she? And how long has she been like this?" he asked.

"Two days, roughly," she answered, "Forty-seven hours, if you want to be specific."

He glanced over at her and saw for the first time the dark circles around her eyes. "How many hours of sleep have you had since it started?"

She held up three fingers.

"Tell me where she is, and go get some sleep. You're no good to us exhausted."

"She's in the mobile suit hanger. I gave her a tranq. six hours ago to keep her from getting violent again. She punched out one of the guards yesterday."

Dr. J. nodded and turned down the appropriate side corridor. The bay was almost empty right now—the Taurus mobiles dolls and suits were out on a strike. At the end of the hangar, closest to the doors, were five sets of brackets designed for much larger suits. Three were empty, one held a partially completed mobile suit, and the Dragonbreak rested in the fifth. D. was there, in an astrosuit with the helmet off, sitting on the gundam's foot, slumped against the leg. She had butchered her hair again, he noticed as he descended. It stuck out in stiff, uneven bristles. She had nicked her scalp in several places, and her head was dotted with fresh scabs. Silently, he cursed whoever had been stupid enough to let her have scissors. The guard yesterday should be thankfully she hadn't gutted him with them.

She was awake, babbling. "So pretty…such prettiness in a death-machine," she whispered as she stroked the cold metal of the gundam's foot. "I will make many deaths in you, my beloved dragon. Such a pretty, pretty war we will make." Dr. J. settled within her line of vision but just out of easy reach. He had no illusions about being able to escape her should she decide to hurt him—she was too great a warrior for that—but he didn't want to startle her. "You come, little ugly broken herald…" she hissed when she noticed him. "Herald of Doom! Yes, that's you, Johansen, Herald of Doom and gloom and doomy death." She stared defiantly at him, challenging him with her eyes.

She had taken off her mask. It lay at his feet, looking grim and cold. He reached down and picked it up with his left hand, the mechanical pincer that replaced the limb he had lost years ago. To think, they had both forfeited so much to this war, and it still had not been won. Most people doubted that there was still a war raging, but he knew the truth—until her soul was still, there would be no peace.

He knelt down on the edge of the gundam's foot and seized her by the chin. She had shut-up when he had picked up the mask, watching him with wary eyes. She fought—she had to, it was in her nature—but she didn't put too much effort into it. He had used his good hand, his flesh and blood hand, after all. He had learned long ago that when D. was like this, she hated the touch of prosthetics to her skin. When she was her normal self, she didn't want to be touched at all.

He studied her face for a moment. The right side of her face, the part that was normally covered by the half-mask. It was a twisted mess of corded, red scar tissue. The cartilage surrounding her right nostril was melted into the skin of her cheek, and her eyelid was so puckered and pinched that it would not close all the way. Somehow, the eyeball itself had escaped being damaged in the blast, but that was little consolation when he saw what was behind the eyes, lurking in her mind. The corner of her mouth was twisted downwards, so it always seemed as if she were about to cry. She was missing part of her lower lip on this side.

Carefully, he laid the cool metal of the mask over the scars. The mask used suction to adhere itself to her face. "You are still a bastard," she informed him quietly as he stepped back.

"And you're a crazy bitch," he replied without malice. "Come on, it's time you got some sleep." He offered his good hand to her, and she took it.

They had taken Relena straight from the shuttle to this little, windowless room and locked her in. Never bothered to say who they were or why she was being abducted this time. It intrigued her—an enemy who didn't gloat and lord over her. Actually, now that she had time to think about it, this was exactly what Zechs had done when she had been held captive on Libra. Ignored her. Now, that was not so intriguing as it was frustrating.

The room was tiny—a cot, a chair, and a little adjoining bathroom with sink and toilet. Someone had done their best to make the bed comfortable—covering the hard plastic mattress with sheets of foam from packing crates. The blanket used to shield her skin from contact with the foam was a little girl's pink one with a cartoon princess on it. The princess blanket was well-worn with a small hole in one corner. The top blanket was scratchy wool in standard army green. They hadn't given her a light, so she simply sat in the dark and waited.

Eventually, her patience was rewarded. The door opened with a creak, and a young woman entered, carrying a tray. "They didn't turn on the light for you?"

"No," Relena answered quietly.

The woman shifted the tray to her other hand and then reached outside and flicked on the lights. Relena blinked furiously as her eyes tried to adjust. "Sorry about that," the woman apologized, "Things have been kind of crazy these past few days."

"I imagine so if you're launching a revolution."

The woman ignored the bite in Relena's voice and set the tray down on the bed next to her. "Is the bed comfortable?" She sat down on the far side of the tray. "Those cot mattresses are horrible without the extra padding."

"Where am I?" Relena asked, cutting straight to the chase.

The girl opened her mouth to answer then paused, frowning. "Damn, I forgot the serial number. It's a small space station orbiting an abandoned mining colony. L3 cluster. We move around so much that sometimes I forget where I am." She laughed, and it was a pleasant sound. She was a few years older than Relena but slightly shorter with an Asian cast to her features that hinted at mixed parentage. "At least here is pretty nice—I spent a couple of months living on a shuttle with four other people. Talk about close quarters."

Relena eyed her suspiciously, "Why are you doing this?"

"Doing what?"

"Being nice to me—it won't get me to trust you."

The woman scooted back on the bed so her back was against the bulkhead and pulled her knees up against her chest. She wore a brown jumpsuit, stained and torn here and there. No insignia. Nothing that denoted rank or even suggest she was paramilitary. Maybe she wasn't—maybe she was just a mechanic or something mundane like that. But that didn't absolve her—she was an admitted one of them and apparently had been for quite a while. "Do I have to have a reason to be nice to you? Maybe I just heard they were bringing a girl my age aboard as a prisoner, and maybe I felt a little sorry for her and wanted to make things a little more comfortable for her. Everyone doesn't have some deep desire to manipulate you."

Relena sighed, still frustrated and on guard. The woman's attempt to set her at ease followed a familiar interrogation technique. Since Mariemaia's Uprising, Lady Une had been rigorous in her drilling Relena in interrogation techniques, ways to bear torture, etc. The basic tenant of all Une's teaching was to trust no one. It was a lesson she ahd already half-learned from her term as Queen of the World and before that, the assassination of her foster father…finding out that Darlian wasn't her biological father…the confrontation with Dr. J….the attack on St. Gabriel's…Heero... It all boiled down to her not being able to trust anyone—not even this woman even though Relena suspected it was her princess blanket they were sitting on.

"Are they going to try to ransom me?" she asked after a few moments.

The other woman shook her head. "Maybe later—I got the feeling that your capture was a spur-of-the-moment thing. Completely unprepared for."

"Great," Relena muttered sarcastically. "Do you people generally just make stuff up as you go along or was this a one-time thing?"

The woman sighed and a small frown wrinkled the skin in between her delicate eyebrows. "Happens just enough to keep us all hopping." It sounded like there was more she wanted to say, so Relena stayed quiet. Instead of continuing, she yawned mightily. "Oh—sorry, I haven't slept really in two days." She looked at the watch on her wrist—a bulky thing that looked like it could take a direct blow from a spanner-wielding maniac and survive—"Oh, lordy, I've got to be on the bridge in four hours for my watch." She turned to Relena and smiled, "Sorry that I have to cut this short. It was nice getting to meet you." She was up, on her feet, and half out the door before Relena could even think of responding. "By the way," the young woman called over her shoulder, "My name's Evelyn Rose." Then, the lock clicked shut, and she was gone. At least the lights were on this time.


End file.
